I resent Gov. Chris Christie’s statement in The Star-Ledger (“N.J. budget panels OK tax hikes on wealthy,” June 25) that the state pension system is “bloated and broken” and therefore should not be rescued.

I worked for Morris County for 32 years, retiring 15 years ago. We earned modest salaries and got modest raises. Double- or triple-dipping wasn’t allowed. We didn’t hire unqualified people or political cronies. Part-timers and temporary workers were ineligible for pensions. We adhered to the civil service merit system. I had a defined contribution for the years it was available, which added to my retirement income. I could not live on my current pension alone.

For at least 20 years, the state government under both parties deferred making proper contributions to the pension system, relying on the “bloated and broken” stock market predictions to kick the can down the road. Over the years, pension abuses increased, too.

Because of these abuses, people who played by the rules and didn’t make a fortune will be hurt. We need to clean out the system and make it fair and modest, like it used to be. Perhaps the worst abusers should have their pensions terminated.

Anne Paust, Succasunna

Sour from the start

I am a retired New Jersey public school educator receiving a state pension, to which I contributed for 26 years. In 2011, when the governor proclaimed pension reform, he told us he was doing it for our own good and that we would thank him for saving our pensions.

Today, the governor states he’s not having New Jersey people pay for “a bloated, broken pension system.” This shows what he thought of the system. The so-called reform was a sham.

He knew all along he would never make those payments. What he really thinks is that no one should have a pension, even if they paid into it. I’m sure he feels the same way about Social Security — so elect him president and see what happens.
JoAnn Corry, Edison

Truly common sense

In the June 24 op-ed “Pension reform must be revisited”, Jerry Cantrell, president of the Common Sense Institute of New Jersey, makes salient points — one of which should hang on the walls of our legislators’ offices: “For those who demand raising taxes, the costs of fixing the pensions are so high that you can’t tax your way out of the problem.” Truer words have never been written.

Our public employees’ pension system was designed at a time when public employees made far less money than their private-sector counterparts, to help prepare them for retirement. It was thought that the private sector would create its own savings plans for later years.

Unfortunately, unions demanded more for their members and politicians awarded every whim for votes from public-sector retirees. As Cantrell points out, this is absurd and must be fixed now so that the future isn’t dire.

Bruce Papkin, Edison

Pensions’ bygone era

Senate President Stephen Sweeney is on the right track with his plan for a defined contribution pension for new state employees. A defined benefit plan, the predominant pension plan for the past 50 years, looks more and more like an ephemera of a time of the high interest rates that prevailed from 1960 to 2000.

With interest rates at their lowest levels in years, and with no evidence that they will rise anytime soon, the state cannot afford to be involved in the business of guaranteeing a pension result for its employees, especially a result built on an earnings assumption of more than 7 percent a year.

Perhaps historian David Hackett Fischer is correct: We have entered an era of low inflation and low interest rates similar to the period from 1815 to 1913. If that’s true, the previous era’s thinking and promises won’t hold.

Barry Harmon, Chatham

Political priorities

Democrats want to change the state’s gross income tax rate from 8.97 percent to 10.75 percent for New Jersey’s wealthiest residents (“N.J. budget panels OK tax hikes on wealthy,” June 25), the roughly 16,000 taxpayers with taxable incomes exceeding $1 million. This would restore the top rate to its 2009 level for a temporary three-year period over taxable years 2014, 2015 and 2016. The money would be used to pay the state’s pension obligation.

New Jersey public pensions are the mechanism by which state and many local government employees in New Jersey receive retirement benefits. Seven separate defined benefit systems administer benefits to the state’s eligible retirees, and as of 2012 these seven systems had 761,341 members.

Every Republican voted against the Democratic plan, and Gov. Chris Christie has promised to veto it. Obviously, these Republicans care more about 16,000 rich people than they do about 761,000 middle-class folks.

Mark F. Donlon, Lambertville

Taxes don’t kill jobs

We’ve heard a lot in the past few weeks about how increasing taxes will harm New Jersey’s economy, make the state less competitive and put the brakes on already slow job growth. But these assertions are built on a foundation of flawed economic theory, not facts.

The experience of California — which had the nation’s third-strongest job growth in 2013, the same year it sharply raised taxes on its wealthiest residents — is yet more proof of a larger point: State and local taxes are a small and relatively unimportant piece of the economic-growth puzzle. Since these taxes make up less than 5 percent of an average company’s cost, it’s no surprise that they aren’t as important to business decisions as many in Trenton would have you believe.

Of course, higher taxes don’t necessarily mean more jobs. But just because that’s not true doesn’t mean the polar opposite — that any tax increases are job-killers — is any more factual. When it comes to job growth, factors other than taxes are clearly more important to employers and should be to policymakers, as well.